Archive for the “Old Media” Category

Thank God a Georgia college student had the good sense to save his friends lives. 

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19365762/detail.html

 How much you wanna bet this NEVER get’s a mention in any major newscast or newspaper?  The only way this would be newsworthy to the MSM is if the kid DIDN’T have a gun and the thugs massacred the students. Then it would fit the medias’ anti 2nd ammendment agenda.

Instead, the good guys win, so it’s no news here, move along, nothing to see here. But Barry and Joe are gettin’ a cheeseburger, let’s send out a news crew!!!

Frickin’ pathetic.

Tim Zank

Worth watching

This morning the news broke regarding the murder of 8 year-old Sandra Cantu. Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested and charged on suspicion of kidnapping and killing the young girl. I read this first on Fox News and they had the picture of a Melissa Huckaby, but it was the wrong Huckaby.

The first picture is the correct Huckaby.

Fox has changed the picture, but there is no mention of the mistake. Several other news agencies did the same thing.

Below is a screen shot of the Post Chronicle’s web site regarding the story. They are using both the correct picture and an incorrect one of another Melissa Huckaby.

The picture of the wrong Melissa Huckaby was obviously lifted from her MySpace page. Below is a screen shot of that page. Note the message on the right side. “Miss Awissa just so you are all aware…I am NOT the Melissa huckaby associated with the Sandra Cantu case.”

How would you like to wakeup to your face being plaster all over the Internet as a child murderer?

AWB

So they’ve sat on their ass and allowed the Internet age to pass them by. Now the dinosaurs of the information age are getting their own stimulus package.

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — Two Minnesota newspapers will receive a share of state grants normally given to retrain workers in manufacturing and other industries in transition.

The Duluth News Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press will work with the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication to help staff adapt to an increasingly Internet-based industry.

Minnesota Job Skills Partnership is awarding $238,000 in state funds, while the newspapers and the university will contribute about $469,000 combined, mostly by devoting staff time to training.

Paul Moe, the state program’s director, said newspapers around the country are looking closely at the project as a potential model.

[...]

Oh, and here’s the interesting part of the story.

Hansen said training will be tailored to the skills of the newsroom and advertising sales staffs at the newspapers. She said a primary goal for both departments will be getting them away from print-based thinking.

Some journalists “don’t know how to start thinking about stories without thinking about what’s going to be in the print newspaper,” she said.

What does that mean? “Print-based thinking?” I find it laughable that they think journalists have anything to do with on-line content delivery. The problem lies within the newspapers management and their inability until now, to embrace the Internet.

Newspaper publishers by and large have yet to figure out the best practices in generating traffic and revenues. They are the ones stuck in print-based thinking, not the journalists. Unlike the blogs, newspaper web sites are pretty trashy, loaded with annoying advertisements and don’t do much in the way of sustaining audience participation.

When’s the last time you saw a user-friendly change” to the Journal Gazette or News Sentinel’s web site?

Camille Paglia’s liberal viewpoint on the Fairness Doctrine.

Worth a listen.

From Drudge:

CABLE NEWS RACE
TUES NITE, FEB 10, 2009
VIEWERS

FOXNEWS O’REILLY 3,494,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,658,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,370,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,305,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,190,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 1,847,000
CNN KING 1,761,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,485,000
CNN COOPER 1,286,000
CNN BLITZER 1,246,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,240,000

Below is a screenshot of a page from the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s web site involving an Upper Darby Township, PA teenager recently arrested for a string of arsons. They placed the story in the entertainment section under music.

Who? – Obama

Yesterday “The One” held a press conference. In the front row, left-wing liberal radio host Ed Schulz. Also in the audience, a liberal blogger from the Huffington Post who Obama called on for a question. Also in the front row, senile witch and leftard columnist Helen Thomas. Columnists have never been given a front row seat at White House press conferences.

In the past, the Obamassiah has referred to Shultz as “the voice of progressive radio”. He’s rumored to start his mornings with a Latte’ reading the Huffington Post. Sam Stein of the Huffington Post asked Obama if he would pursue “prosecution of Bush administration officials.” How atypical and frankly, a stoopid question.

Can you imagine the outrage in the mainstream media if President Bush had allowed right-wing bloggers a front and center seat? Imagine the outrage if Rush or Hannity were also in the front row during a Bush press conference.

Is this what Obama meant when he stated so many times he would be running a bi-partisan administration? Does he really think he can put a chokehold on reporters that don’t see it “his” way. Is this change you can believe in?

Apparently Wall Street doesn’t believe..

7870.32 -400.55 (-4.84%) Feb 10 3:45pm ET
Open: 8269.36
High: 8315.07
Low: 7848.74

Volume: 318,552,986
Avg Vol: 274,569,000

AWB

We might just be reading that headline soon.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer is put up for sale

SEATTLE (AP) — Hearst Corp. put Seattle’s oldest newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, up for sale on Friday and said that if it can’t find a buyer in the next 60 days the paper would likely close or continue to exist only online. More [here]

From the Atlantic Monthly

VIRTUALLY ALL THE predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as sources of original reporting.

But what if the old media dies much more quickly? What if a hurricane comes along and obliterates the dunes entirely? Specifically, what if The New York Times goes out of business—like, this May?

It’s certainly plausible. Earnings reports released by the New York Times Company in October indicate that drastic measures will have to be taken over the next five months or the paper will default on some $400 million in debt. With more than $1 billion in debt already on the books, only $46 million in cash reserves as of October, and no clear way to tap into the capital markets (the company’s debt was recently reduced to junk status), the paper’s future doesn’t look good. More [here]

From UPI

CHICAGO, Jan. 9 (UPI) — Chicago’s Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (NYSE:SVN) said it would close 12 weekly newspapers to cut expenses as advertising revenues have fallen.
The 12 suburban newspapers scheduled to close are part of 51 newspapers published by Pioneer Press, which the Sun-Times purchased in 1989.

The newspapers, scheduled to fold Jan. 15, cover mostly the northwest suburbs of Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business reported Friday. More [here]

Bloggers should take note of where they get a lot of their stories. The print industry and their online editions. Kind of ironic, yes? Then again, why would someone pay $500 a year for seven-day, home-delivery of the New York Times when you can get the same news online for free?

AWB